Crash Believed to Be First Serious One Involving Major U.S. Pro Team

The bus crash Thursday that injured 12 members of the Angels apparently was the first serious travel accident involving a major pro sports team in the United States.

However, there have been several fatal plane and bus accidents involving college and other amateur teams.

NFL, NBA, NHL and major league baseball officials could not recall any serious team crashes in their sports. The closest call in the NBA occurred in 1960, when a plane carrying the Minneapolis Lakers made an emergency landing in an Iowa cornfield. No one was injured.

Other teams haven’t been so lucky:

--Seventy-five people died, including 37 Marshall University football players, when a plane crashed on Nov. 14, 1970, in Huntington, W.Va.

--Eighteen members of the U.S. figure skating team were killed when their plane crashed in Belgium on Feb. 16, 1961.

--Sixteen members of the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo football team died in a plane crash in Toledo, Ohio, on Oct. 10, 1960.

--Fourteen University of Evansville basketball players were killed when their plane went down in Evansville, Ind., on Dec. 13, 1977.

--Fourteen Wichita State football players died in a plane crash in Colorado on Oct. 2, 1970.

--Fourteen fighters on the U.S. amateur boxing team were killed in a plane crash in Warsaw, Poland, on March 14, 1980.

-- Nine members of the of the Spokane, Wash., baseball team of the Western International League were killed on July 24, 1946., when their bus crashed in the Cascades Mountains of Washington.

--Six persons--the team’s manager, four players and a truck driver--died after a bus carrying the Duluth (Minn.) Dukes, a Class C farm club of the St. Louis Cardinals, crashed head-on with the truck near St. Paul on July 24, 1948.

--Earlier this year, two members of the Notre Dame women’s swim team were killed when a bus carrying them home from a meet crashed near the campus in a heavy snowstorm.